Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: I had so much fun talking to you, CJ, today, and I hope we get to talk more and more because it just seems like we were just starting to crack that nut about what's so important, about sharing our lives and our stories and our dreams with each other. And you just are such a wonderful host. So thank you so much for having me here.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you so much for coming on the show, Tezra. I'm sure everyone's going to enjoy this episode as well. All right, great.
Welcome to supernormalize, the podcast, where we challenge the conventional break boundaries and normalize the seemingly supernatural. Join me, CJ Barnaby, in the liminalist space to explore the less chartered realms of existence, to unravel the mysteries of life. Experience each episode I'm blessed with the opportunity to talk to regular people from across the world where they openly share their understanding and wisdom in service to others. If you are looking to upgrade your life, you've come to the right place. Be sure to rate this podcast like and subscribe and I'll bring you great transforming conversations each week. If you value the value this show and would like to help me make it happen, please join my Patreon, which starts at as little as $5 per month, and you'll get exclusive content, live pro tips and a discussion channel and more depending on the tier you join. Let's together embrace acceptance of the supernatural and unusual as what it really is. Completely normal. Today on supernormal eyes, we have Tezza. Lord Teza's life has been a vivid journey of transformation and spiritual activism, from her caribbean she pirate days to becoming a public advocate for modern spirituality, environmentalism.
Our conversation today is meandering and goes over her life story and basically her change in her personal cosmology over time and how it actually helped her.
Her experiences helped her to evolve towards her understanding that life is about love and connection and being here now, really, she's a child of the sixties and it shows she's been through a lot and it's brought her to a greater understanding of herself and her life, and she loves to share that with the world. So I'm sure you'll enjoy this episode as much as I did and on with the show.
Okay, so welcome to super normalize Tezza. Lord Tezza, you've had, what would we call it, an eclectic life, which has been expansive and spiritual and continuously changing. And. And you've gone, I mean, I don't know, were you born with this modern spirituality? And welcome to the show.
[00:03:27] Speaker A: Well, thank you, CJ and welcome to everybody who is listening or watching. And I don't know, I was born like, it seems like a thousand years ago. It could be a million years ago because my life just seems continuous from when I, my first memories were, ah, I remember being here before. So everything was deja vu. Everything, everything was deja vu. And I think that happens a lot to kids and we forget as we get older how much connected we are to what we came in with.
[00:04:00] Speaker B: Well, Sonny, you talk about that feeling of deja vu and everything. I noticed I actually had more deja vu when I was a child. And it's like that was me just remembering a life that I'd already had, which always made me think, do I just live the same life over and over?
[00:04:18] Speaker A: Now that is an interesting thing. I hope not. I hope you have evolved a little bit, or maybe your life is so magnificent that it's worth living over and over, and that could go either way. That's right, whichever way you look at it.
[00:04:32] Speaker B: Well, I did think that maybe that was because we had to get lessons in that life. And if you didn't get it right, you just get set back in time to that, start again, and you're coming in and then you're doing all the things again. And if you didn't get it right that time, you get to have another rewrite it again if you want to. Do you know, it's up to you.
[00:04:51] Speaker A: Well, I know when I, when I was first introduced to reincarnation, I said, oh, yeah, that makes sense. Like, when you see somebody like these musicians, like Bach, Beethoven, they just come in with so much previous knowledge, they just start twittering away as if they were in their 50th year of music making and other things, other people who are really good with languages, certain people who are really terrific with one thing because they've been so familiar with certain things. And to me, reincarnation is the only answer for the way I saw life. And, you know, the Judeo Christian thing that was fed to me, and I don't know about you, but I just didn't buy it. That whole heaven hell thing, I said, no, that just doesn't make sense. It's too creepy.
[00:05:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I know what you mean by that. I found it quite terrifying as a child because I did actually go to Sunday school every Sunday, but I did actually like to ask a lot of questions, which was really unsettling to the head practitioner at that time. And, yeah, it just turned out that that wasn't for me. I, they couldn't answer the questions and also, I didn't like the idea of being terrified all the time by the possibility of what future would come by me doing things that I wasn't even conscious of. So, you know, that that was quite sort of bizarre in itself. But as my own personal spirituality grow, I realized that heaven and a hell are right here if we wanted to be.
[00:06:19] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:06:20] Speaker B: That's a reality we create, right?
[00:06:22] Speaker A: Exacto mundo. Yeah. And recovering people like myself, I'm 40 years in recovery from addiction. And, you know, they say that people like us, we don't believe in hell because we've already been there and so we're living heaven.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So can you share about your childhood and early influences that shaped your. Shaped your adventurous spirit and your creative inclinations? I mean, you're very creative person. When did you start and notice this about yourself? I mean, and how did that sort of manifest for you as a child?
[00:06:57] Speaker A: What is that word you're using? Accredited?
[00:06:59] Speaker B: No, I. Creative. Creative, creative.
[00:07:01] Speaker A: Oh, creative.
[00:07:03] Speaker B: Yeah. Sorry. It does. It does confuse some people.
[00:07:09] Speaker A: You know, there again, I think I was just born with all the stuff that I am today. I just nurtured it. But I was born into. They say we choose our family. That's been a hard one for me because my family sucked. I started running away from home, like, as soon as I had legs, I said, what am I doing here with these people? And so that, for me, was the big challenge. Like, what am I doing in this body as a woman, as a white woman? You know, all those labels to me now make no sense at all. I prefer the label as person. Even some people are getting away with person stuff. They're thinking themselves as plants or minerals. And I don't know, we're just spirits in this incarnation and we're just trying to get home, get home to a place of comfort. And for me, my struggle was I had to leave my home of birth and also my nation. I basically became a gypsy because I just didn't like anything about America. I went to live in the West Indies as a sailor and as just an entrepreneur living with third world people, wanted to live in the jungle. I've always had a fascination for plants.
And so as a child, I had all these curiosities to begin with. And in order to fulfill who I really knew I had to become, I had to leave. I had to run away. I basically had to not so much turn my back on my family, but my family ended up disowning me. That made it easier. I said, okay, if you don't want me. I'll just go. And so I now, today, have a beautiful family because I married my husband 33 years ago, and his family has totally embraced me. But my birth family just did not know what to make of me. And basically thought I was a crazy person. And so I just truly knew that I wasn't crazy. And when the day dawned on me that I was just me, that I could pursue that line, that society and church and state and everything else called weird Orlando crazy, then I could just truly be myself. And that started about when I reached my twenties. So up until the twenties, it was pretty unbearable. I was a very, very mixed up kid. I was a teenage alcoholic. I was on rampages, angry. I mean, I'm lucky I didn't get thrown into jail before. I actually was as a pirate, more or less, in the Caribbean. But, I mean, I was an angry person. And I can really relate to the kids these days who are. Who are so sad and mixed up and angry and frustrated, because that was me. And matter of fact, my first nonfiction narrative book was about teaching girls in prison, because I relate to them so much. How do they get in prison? Because they are so angry. They want to do things like steal and murder and plunge and do drugs and be bad people. And that's why you end up in jail.
I really reach out and try to communicate with people who are imprisoned, either in their own thinking or actually in a prison of some sort, or a society where they can't be themselves.
And I had to fight long and hard to be who I am. And I urge anybody who's listening just to really believe in who you are inside yourself. And don't listen to anybody telling you that you shouldn't be this way or that way. Because the way you feel you are, it really is who you are. And you may just be so totally unique that nobody's ever met a creature like you.
[00:11:05] Speaker B: Wow, that's a great message for people out there, because, I mean, I know. I wish I heard it when I was a kid, because I knew I could talk to spirits. I had contact with other entities. For me, that was normal. And I had to suppress that to actually be in society. And as a part of that suppression myself, I got addicted. First of all, I binge drink alcohol when I was a child. And then got into smoking marijuana and did that to the point where I pretty much erased my memory completely for a number of years. And that wasn't good.
But I thought I was doing good things and learning things still, but I have no recollection of those years. But that was all part of the suppression of myself.
[00:11:48] Speaker A: And, yeah, you and I are very similar. Yeah, the addiction thing is all about self sabotage. And if anybody thinks they're going to reach who they truly are through an addiction, I mean, okay, you can take a little of this, a little of that, you know, if you're a normal person. Not me, but I can't, I don't touch alcohol. I don't even know touch pot anymore. And I was a seeker through plants, plant medicines, a lot of peyote. Never took ayahuasca, but I took all the sister plants, etcetera, etcetera. But all that does is numb us, numb our feelings, and it's through our human feelings that we really evolve. And the feelings are the guys or the Bible. They're the rules, they're the structure or how we can reach the divine.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, I do recall that spirits used to whisper to me when I was stoned or high in somewhere that say, you're just getting out of it. And I'm like, yeah, I'm getting out of it. But they didn't, like, I didn't really connect with that. Later on, I was like, wait a minute, I'm actually getting out of my own life rather than actually fully, right.
[00:13:04] Speaker A: You don't do any smoking or anything now? You don't get out of yourself?
[00:13:08] Speaker B: No. Well, you know, it's, it's all within a certain degree. And I do things for, for transformational reasons if I have to, only when I'm called. But otherwise, I have no desire to really do anything because the world is a completely amazing place as it is. And I can get there through meditation and absolutely work. And, uh, just, you know, really, you can do journeying as well. You know, like, um, uh, Carl Jung proposed in active imagination. Well, this stuff works and it works. Yeah, right. And it works just as good.
[00:13:45] Speaker A: So you and I are kindred spirits.
[00:13:47] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: We could be twins. But I do want to say a plug medical marijuana, now that it's legal. I mean, I don't know how it is in Australia, but recently I've had to have surgery. And it's so good for the tincture. I'm not talking about smoking it, but the tincture, the nectar of the plant, which is from the divine, it completely eliminates. Eliminates spasms, nerve spasms. And my husband and I are just getting over Covid for the second time. And he had terrible lingering effects, which was like body aches. And so a friend recommended taking just a little tiny bit of THC and CBD mixed together, and boom, it made a disconnect between the pain and his brain. It left there. There are wonderful things, but we just take things to excess, don't we? Do those of us who are in.
[00:14:41] Speaker B: Addiction, that's a part. That's a part of what happens in our society, because the colonialized experience of reality is something that grates against our soul. And in doing so, we try to actually find a way to, how would you say it, live within that paradigm when we know it's completely broken. And the part of that is, well, every now and then, you know, you know, when I was more in my addictive personality, I was like, well, that's it. I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna have a cone. And that was, yeah, my escape route. Right. You know, be like, come and come home from work. And I'd be like, that's it. I've got to smoke up. And.
[00:15:21] Speaker A: Right.
[00:15:22] Speaker B: That was the way, you know, that.
[00:15:23] Speaker A: For me, the journey, it was so painful when I was a kid that maybe I would have committed suicide. I definitely thought about committing myself.
And if it wasn't for, especially the plant medicines to help me shock myself into a different reality, I would not be alive today. But yet it didn't stop my journey of addiction. And the journey itself is long for some and short for others.
Everybody's different, that's for sure. I would never tell anybody, no, don't take something if they felt that it would facilitate a step toward their knowing themselves better.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: Yeah, well, when medicines are used as medicines, they're actually effective.
[00:16:09] Speaker A: Yeah, but meditation is. I'm a total addict of meditation. I'll tell you, I love, I'm an addict of the sacred and addict of the divine. And, I mean, that kind of an addiction is good. I think all humans are addicts of some sort. The trick is to get something really beneficial and healthy to be addicted to.
[00:16:30] Speaker B: That's right. That's right. Yeah, yeah, I see.
Yeah. It seems like a lot of the times nowadays, though, people don't realize addiction can take so many forms. Even sitting there with your phone and scrolling through, you know, basically all the bad news that's happening, I mean, that's an addiction too, right? And you don't realize you're in it. Sometimes you can be on some sort of app, and next minute, an hour's gone, and you've just read lots of garbage that made you feel bad about the world. I mean, what's the point in that, right?
[00:16:58] Speaker A: Yeah. Addiction is a sneaky thing, and it is a human endeavor. And when I first came into the recovery world, I realized you don't just stop an addiction. You have to have a substitute. You probably know that. You can't just say, oh, I'm going to stop eating cookies. Well, you have to find something that you're going to love as much. So you start eating, I don't know, like sweet potatoes. They're pretty delicious. But for. For just stopping something that's not the human way. I mean, we would be depraved and deprived individuals, and so we want to flourish and we want to thrive, and so we want to give ourselves good addiction, like breathing instead of smoking and running instead of, you know, just sitting there and watching another screen.
[00:17:47] Speaker B: Exactly. Exactly.
So let's go for a little walk through your life experience and get to understand more of you. What were some of your key experiences during your time studying at the school of. Museum of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston from 1965 to 68? I mean, that would have been amazing at that time because that would have been the cultural revolution that was happening in America.
[00:18:11] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. The height of the Vietnam and LSD, and everybody was having bns and rolling in the mud.
But for me, it was spectacular to be in that school. The Museum of Fine Arts, to me, is still just really a champion of artistic expression. And I was from a home where I was told, no, you don't do art. That's just a waste of time. Maybe after the end of the week, and you fed the kids and you've done the lawn and you've put away the laundry, then maybe you could sit down and think about doing a little needlepoint or something. So for me to want to be an artist was a sign of my rebellion.
And to be accepted at the Museum of Fine Arts in that time was an honor because they had many applicants, thousands of applicants. But I was chosen in the first wave, which the method that they did was they selected 50 people for a class of 100 right away based on their portfolio, just what you can make. And then. Yeah. And then they invited a couple hundred to come for a summer session, and out of that summer session, they chose the other 50. So when I was chosen out of the first wave, I was, whoa. It was like, I felt it was the hand of God coming down and saying, see, this is what you're really supposed to do. Because I was not allowed to do it as a kid. I was never allowed to have an art lesson. And everything in my portfolio was copied. Just. I took a beautiful picture book called the Family of Man, which was a photographic exhibition of, you know, wonderful photojournalism around the world. And I copied it, and, and then I thought, oh, but I have to have something original. I mean, I'm an artist.
[00:20:06] Speaker B: I'm.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: They're supposed to want something creative. This is not really creativity. This is just draftsmanship. So I said, okay, I'm going to do something creative. And, and it was so hard. I swear to God, CJ, it was like taking a cosmic shit, because I. I just, I was like, wow, how do I do something, like, totally out of my own creativity? But I said, I'll stick to the seasons. I know the seasons, summer, winter, fall, and whatnot. And so, sure enough, I just got some blank paper, and I forced myself to be creative, and I was faking it, but they must have liked it. Was totally abstract, didn't make any sense, had nothing to do with the scenes of landscape or had to do with feelings.
And so based upon realistic draftsmanship, copying these beautiful photojournalistic photos and my four little creative drawings, I was accepted. And it just was, it changed my life. It just absolutely was with my tribe. I was with people who were creative, who even the way they dressed or the way they wore their hair or didn't and had paint all over them and ink stains, and it was just an incredible atmosphere. And the Museum of Fine Arts, to be involved in a museum where it has the best display of eastern art, like egyptian art, has tombs and sarcophagi all over the place, and also eastern art, and it was just life changing. So right after that experience, I became a botanical illustrator at Harvard.
[00:21:50] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:21:51] Speaker A: And I did. I just jumped right into becoming a portraitist for the divination plants they're called today plants of the gods.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: Oh, nice. Okay.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I probably seen your drawings, right? Yes. They're published all over the place. And on my website, which is tezalord.com, there is a special gallery of my botanical illustrations. Like I did all the family of coca, because at that time, cocaine was just being, you know, part of our society. It was just really being introduced. The cartels had not yet really formed, but they were starting to warm up. This is like the late sixties, early seventies, and the United States government wanted to know, uh oh, what is going on? So they actually commissioned a study from Harvard University, and I was involved about the history of the plant coca. What did it have to do with humanity? And why was it becoming such a problem? And it was very fascinating. And that began my journey with plants being really teachers and guides and the shamanic world and all that we learn by going deeply into the lessons of the plant consciousness.
[00:23:15] Speaker B: Right.
Sounds like a thread that you had through your whole life there. Once you actually really got touched by the plants and plant medicines, then it became a theme that carried along with everything else you were doing. I mean, you did that at Harvard University from 968 to 78 as well, with, like, actually drawing these plants. Is that right? Too?
[00:23:38] Speaker A: Right. So Schultes are. Richard Evans Schultes at the time, who was the big hefe. He's the. He's the guy who introduced ayahuasca to the world and also peyote. He studied peyote before ayahuasca and coca. All the students that I was working with were his disciples, and Schultes was the big boss of the botanical museum at Harvard. So during this time that I was drawing, transcendental meditation came along. This was 1968, so I was right in the midst of my plant exploration when along came these guys who looked like Mormons. They were dressed in suits, and they had just come from the Beatles. You know, the Beatles were not there at Harvard Square when the meditation, the TM people showed up, and they never once ever talked about the expansion of consciousness. They really had a sales pitch. They said, if you meditate, you will become better at whatever it is that you wish to be, and you will achieve and you will succeed. And, you know, all these efficiency things and never talked about the. The connection to the sacred scriptures of the past, you know, all the Vedas and the Upanishads and everything.
[00:24:54] Speaker B: It was a trojan. It was definitely a trojan horse at the time.
[00:24:56] Speaker A: I think it was a trojan horse, and I fell for it. Hook, lang and sinker. I said, sign me up.
[00:25:04] Speaker B: Even the beach boys were singing about it as well. I mean, I remember.
[00:25:07] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah. So at that, I was. I was initiated in the first wave of TMRs.
[00:25:14] Speaker B: Yeah. Cool.
[00:25:14] Speaker A: And that was 68, so I wasn't ready to dive into it yet. I still had some more partying to do. You know, people who like to party, they got to get it out of their system. It's just like a guy who has to spread his seed. Okay. But, you know, some people just want to experience the wild side. That was me.
[00:25:36] Speaker B: Nice, nice. And a part of your wild side actually involved sailing in Nantucket and going on journeys through the bahamian islands and Panama Canal between 69 and 73. What was happening there?
[00:25:50] Speaker A: Whoa.
Did I write all this stuff, or did you just, like, discover it?
[00:25:55] Speaker B: You wrote it all. So I actually went and read all your website and got some questions.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, it's out there. Wow. Everybody can see who I am. It's true. I really fell in love with the sea. The sea became a guru. You know, the plants were gurus, the sky were gurus, and then the ocean became guru. And, boy, I just merged with the sea. I just wanted to sail. So I learned how to sail in Nantucket, actually, Gloucester, which is in Massachusetts. I had my first boat and just knocked down every pier I could learning how to sail, because I didn't even know how to tie a knot at that time. And then I more like, Nantucket wasn't sailing so much. There is. Well, I may as well say it, because we're going to get into all sorts of things on this talk, but I did see a fleet of spaceships on my time in Nantucket. That was the main thing about Nantucket. I was honored to witness a phenomena that other people have seen. I have since met other people who saw what I saw, which was on an island, island 35 miles out at sea. I've met people who saw the same thing from the mainland, but it was basically a fleet of UFO's with a lot of action going on on the eastern seaboard. So that was about 60.
That was 969 or 70 somewhere along that time when we were sending people to the moon.
[00:27:25] Speaker B: Wow, cool. And what was that experience like for you when you saw the UFO's? I mean, was it a very ordinary experience, or was it.
Sometimes. Sometimes it can be, like, ordinary. I mean, I know for myself I can. I've been there and had times where I've just walked out to my car to go to work, and because I do other work as well, and just standing there, and one flies over in a beautiful arc, but obviously not a, you know, normal craft. And, like, there's another one, you know?
Wow. Yeah.
[00:27:54] Speaker A: For me. For me, it was life altering, because, like I said, it's. It was a. A fleet. It was not a ship. It was. There was a mother ship, and you could not see the shape of the ship because it was so high in the atmosphere, but I could tell by the beam of light it was so strong. And it was flanked by what I call two lieutenant ships protecting it. And then coming in and out of the atmosphere were like what I call reconnaissance ships that were just going everywhere and scouting. No, it was not an ordinary event, and I have never seen anything like it since. And if I ever had before, I was not aware. But no, no, it changed my life because I knew first of all that they were friendly and they were. I felt telepathically they were communicating that they were just checking to make sure that we are keeping things in balance, which is very important for the whole universe, not just earth, not just Gaia, but we must keep things in balance for the sake of the structure of this universe. Now, maybe there's other. Other multiverses. Of course, I don't know exactly where these creatures came from, but I felt very, very sincerely that they were friendly and they were just watching us, making sure that we were not going to fuck up.
[00:29:25] Speaker B: Nice.
And so that led you to working in some movies as well after that time on your shipping adventures.
[00:29:40] Speaker A: So we're skipping from the ships in the sea, in the sky to ships in the sea. Yes. I had an inter island shipping business when I lived in the Caribbean, which I was in the Caribbean for almost the entire decade of the seventies, and many islands and many different ventures. But basically, a shipping business was the main thing. Shipping tropical fruits and vegetables from islands that had abundant growth to dry islands. And it was previous to that time and in between that time that I got involved with movie making. And, you know, here and there, you run into people who need scouts.
I actually was asked to be involved in one movie, but I declined because I was still in my addiction at that time. I really did not want to get involved in that kind of life. And at one point, I was in Martha's Vineyard. After learning how to sail in Massachusetts, I went to Nantucket and then to Martha's Vineyard. And that's a. Where they were making jaws. And so I worked on jaws as a set girl, making things, you know, being an artist with sets and props and distressing a brand new boat into being the shark catching boat, which you see in the movie.
[00:31:04] Speaker B: Yeah, right. Cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I credit that movie with being the first lp record that I was inspired to buy as a child LP, because it actually. The music from it actually inspired me so much. I was like, oh, my God, it's so intense. But also credit with. Credit it with scaring me out of the sea for swimming for quite a long time.
[00:31:26] Speaker A: Yes. Oh, yeah. And in Australia, you guys have those great whites, which, you know, of course, that's what Jaws was all about, a great white. And it scared me, too. I mean, I knew that this was a fake shark that we had. We even called him Ralph. I think it was a dummy. And although somebody went out and tried to catch a great white, but they couldn't keep it alive until they got it back to the vineyard. But even though I knew it was fake, it was a very scary situation. I did not see the movie for at least ten years after I worked on it. And to this day, I mean, I am a swimmer. I'm an ocean swimmer.
I swim along the shore. I don't go straight out.
When I see a dorsal fin come toward me, my heart goes thumpity thumpity thumpity thump. But it happened once. I know my husband and I were swimming and we usually swim a mile, but we spin so it's like rapid, and we see this big dorsal coming. And I thought, uh oh, this is it. But it was an old, old dolphin, you know, an old porpoise who was at least 10ft long. He was big and he was covered with all sorts of plankton and everything, but he was checking us out. He just swam up. He was totally by himself. He was not with his pod. He was a loner.
[00:32:44] Speaker B: Yeah, right. Cool.
So what were your significant moments from your decade living and sailing in the West Indies, particularly your inter island tropical and food shipping business and native style restaurant. Tell us all about that journey.
[00:33:00] Speaker A: Well, I think the biggest experience was I wanted to be simple. I wanted to get away from materialism of America, of mainland, continental, anywhere. And when you're living in islands, there's always a. Want a dearth of something. Sometimes even there's not enough toilet paper in those days, you know, you have to live without. Like, I was in Cuba recently. That place is so bad, I. They don't even have soap. I mean, people beg on the street for just a little tiny bar of soap in Cuba. But that's extreme, of course, because that's communism. But when you choose to live on islands, especially in the seventies when there was no Internet and hardly any CNN was just being born then. Nobody had tvs. I mean, I've been to places where they had never seen a white woman on a black island like Dominica, where the population is predominantly african american, not american, african descent, but all different variations of african native people and a little bit of the colonials. Not many, I mean, really, some of the islands, yes, more so than others. But for me, the predominant experience that I was looking for and achieved was to get away from materialism, was to be just self sufficient, to cook my own food, to have friends who just talked about things like, how are the chickens doing? How much water did the goat need?
Nobody ever asked. I mean, I'm talking about the native people never asked, like, what do you do for a living? I said, wow, it's so great to be in a place where people are not interrogating me about, what do you do, and what's your purpose in society, and how do you fit in? Where'd you get those shoes, those silly things? I'm just not into that.
And I succeeded very much in knowing what it's like to live just without anything. I mean, literally, I had one bikini, one nice dress, one nice pair of shoes, and that was basically the way I lived. And so I lived very simply. And I was traveling around with all my tools because I'm always able to make things. Like, as a jeweler, I had a lot of experience when I was in Nantucket. I had a silver and gold shop. So I know how to make things with tools, and I know how to whip out some paper and I. And make somebody's portrait so I can make money wherever I am just by setting up a little station and draw people's portraits.
So I had a very successful time, and the only reason I really left was because hurricanes came along and blew away every single bit of the tropical fruits and vegetable business that I had worked so hard to achieve. We had no insurance, and we just lived, you know, very comfortably and very casually. And that was. That was what I wanted. That's what I. You know, a lot of people, they. They go right out of school, and they have a career, they have a family. I wanted adventure. I didn't want to be some old lady saying, oh, gee, I wish I had gone traveling. I just followed my bliss, and my bliss was to be with simple people in simple places.
And I just kept following that bliss until I had my share, and then I was ready to do something else. So from the West Indies, I went to Israel, and I wanted to experience what it was like to live in the Middle east. And I'm so glad I did that. I have a really unique perspective about the situation that's going on today, and I understand it in a deeper, visceral way than most people who just hear about it from the news.
So every experience I've had is led up to me being able to write about it, to paint about it, to talk about it, to share the one commonality that all of this is about, which is love, love, love.
[00:37:32] Speaker B: That's your key message, then?
[00:37:34] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. My message is love is the weapon of mass illumination. If everybody focused on love instead of whatever it is they're focusing on politics or art, even, or this or that or that or this, if they focus on love, which is spirit, love, which is consciousness, not just amor, love, which is a noun verb. If they focused on that, everybody would become more evolved, more compassionate for each other, and we would realize that we are all manifestations of love, that we are all just little cells of love, and we interact in love.
[00:38:21] Speaker B: Beautiful, wonderful. Love it.
That's perfect.
So from your journey in Israel, you became a cabinet maker for a while in New York City.
[00:38:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:35] Speaker B: Yeah. And did you do, like, custom works? I mean, what were you doing with cabinet making? I mean, such an odd turn.
[00:38:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, being an artist, you know, I have never done anything for.
I have never sold my art out. I have always expressed myself what spirit and love of spirit told me to express. So in order to feed myself, in order to pay the rent, I would do all sorts of crazy things for a living. So I became a cabinet maker, an assistant cabinet maker, because my skills were just secondary. But they're pretty good. Except I hate, you know, those table saws. They're so dangerous. I've had a friend who had all his fingers chopped off. They're very, very dangerous. Yeah. So. But I wanted to live to be an artist that could express herself, so I would do all these crazy things, and cabinet making was fun, and I learned a lot. You learn a lot about working with materials, another material, intimately. When you're a cabinet maker, you have to really go with the grain.
You know what that expression is? Don't go against the grain.
And also working with designers and really high class, sophisticated clients who could have anything made. I mean, it was nothing for people to spend $30,000 for a built in bed with custom shelves, that kind of stuff. I mean, just phenomenal. They're real sculptural. Sculptural things that I did.
[00:40:15] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[00:40:17] Speaker A: But I got to say, it was the fifth floor that I was living in, in Tribeca, which is south of Soho, I called it. So soho. And a lot of times, the elevator was broken, so I got to be very strong. I have muscles, like, amazing, because I would walk up sheets and sheets and sheets of plywood with my partner. I mean, up five flights to where the woods working studio was. God, I know. When the elevator was broken, what could you do?
[00:40:47] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:40:49] Speaker A: That's city life. City life is crazy.
[00:40:51] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. It is. I mean, why would they even put this geo on that fifth floor in the first place? It should be on the first floor.
[00:40:58] Speaker A: Yeah, it should be, shouldn't it?
[00:41:02] Speaker B: Wow. So you went from a cabinet maker to garden designer, and then you started doing. You actually posed for the Civitas project in 1990. And that.
[00:41:15] Speaker A: Are you familiar with that project?
[00:41:17] Speaker B: No. Tell me more about it.
[00:41:18] Speaker A: Okay. Civitas is how you pronounce it.
She's the goddess of modern civilization. And if anybody wants to see a spectacular interchange of art and purpose and sacred geometry, it's Civitas. The artist was Audrey Flack. Unfortunately, she passed away recently, just a couple weeks ago. And she chose me to be the model because I'm very tall and I'm very muscular from all. Slept all that, you know, plywood around.
And a lifelong yogi. I've been standing on my head since I was 18 years old. It makes you very strong. So she wanted to have a tribute to the modern form of goddess who's going to protect and nurture and guide civilization. So that's why she named her Civitas.
And it's not from ancient times. It's totally made up from modern times. And Audrey chose to make four of them, which are about 60ft tall in their pedestal. And they're at an intersection, a commercial intersection in Rock Hill, North Carolina. And it's quite impressive. And so I got to pose for that. And it felt very much of an honor. And it was right after I got sober. So I was in my second year of sobriety, and I was really coming into my own power and discovering who I really was from having numbed myself for so long. I was 36 when I got sober. And so 36 is a good age to get sober. It's. Any age is a good time to be sober. But I am now sober longer than I was for all those years. I'm now 77. Wow, that's another lifetime.
[00:43:12] Speaker B: That's. Yeah, you've. Yeah, yeah, you've really lived it and also escaped it. So that's. That's fantastic.
[00:43:19] Speaker A: Yeah, I came pretty close to dying many, many times.
[00:43:23] Speaker B: Right.
[00:43:24] Speaker A: Because of addiction.
[00:43:26] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can understand that. It's, um. It's horrible what it can do to us. Um, and I'm. I'm happy to hear that you've escaped the loop. Really?
[00:43:37] Speaker A: Yeah. And I just want to put a plug in there for AA. I mean, I used to think, oh, yeah, I can change my life anytime I want to. I'm big and strong. But, oh, no, when you're really an addict, it has you by the throat. And so I finally surrendered and asked for help. And if anybody is in a similar position, please check out Alcoholics Anonymous or narcotics Anonymous, because it really saved my butt. And I still go to a meeting every now and then, and I help people to find the rooms of recovery, because it's a wonderful fellowship around the world. You can go anywhere and just feel you're with kindred spirits because they've been to hell, like I said earlier, and now they're living in heaven because they've decided to live with their higher power. That's what they call spirit, higher power.
[00:44:29] Speaker B: Nice. Yeah. Excellent.
You then moved to Florida after that time in the Civitas project, and.
[00:44:41] Speaker A: Oh, that was.
I was. I don't know. I think I.
I didn't move to Florida. Oh, yeah, you're right. It's 30 years ago.
It's. It's 33 years ago. Right? You're right.
[00:44:57] Speaker B: Yeah. And you met. Met Carter Lord, and.
[00:45:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Got married.
Boy. Yeah. Talk about another transformation, because, well, I've written about it. I mean, I hate that you really talk about my life, because that's why I write. I mean, let's talk about something more interesting. If you want to hear this, just go read my books. You know, I wrote a whole book about that. It's called Zen Love.
[00:45:24] Speaker B: Oh, beautiful.
[00:45:26] Speaker A: Yeah. But it really. Sometimes it seems so silly to talk about my life. There's so many more interesting things like spirit and love and what are we going to do to change the world, you know? So that's why I really wrote. That's why I wrote those books. Those damn books, because they're such fascinating stories.
But you just get tired of telling your life story. And because it's so much more detailed when you write a book about it, too, you really go into the nitty gritty and all the different. Like, for instance, Zen love. It's not just my husband.
When I married him, it wasn't just this man. It was this lifestyle. Because he was a single parent with two young kids. Two young children and a very dysfunctional bio mom. I called her Biomom. I was angel mom. She was Biomom. And it's very intricate story. And there's also. There's three generations of. Because there were the grandparents involved and so many complications and so many transformations and so many mysteries unfolding and synchronicities. It was just a fascinating story.
It's worth it to write your story when you have been gifted such an incredible life.
[00:46:47] Speaker B: When you were younger, did you believe that you'd ever get married?
[00:46:51] Speaker A: Oh, I've been married many times. Legally and lonely.
I'm a relationship junkie.
No, no, no. Carter is my true love. But I was addicted to relationships just as well as other drugs. Relationships can be a drug.
And so that's another whole story. Too. It's not one I'm proud of, but when you get sober, okay. And Carter was the first love that I felt in sobriety. I was seven years sober when we said, I do, and I really do believe for me, I didn't know what love was until I got sober. I thought it was something else. It was just an adventure or something somebody could help me with. But when I meteous Carter, I truly felt that this was an empowerment situation, that to sign on to this kind of a love was a leap of faith. And it was challenging. It wasn't easy at all. It was very challenging.
So I had never experienced anything like that. All my friends said, run, don't walk. Just get the hell away from. Oh, no, no, no. But they didn't know, because at that point in sobriety, I had learned to listen to my heart instead of my head. And so my head was saying, what the heck are you doing? But my heart was just, like, vibrating with energy.
Even at the sound of his voice, I just. There was something that was like a crystal going on.
And I couldn't deny it. I tried to deny it a couple times. You know, the story. The story is really an interesting story.
[00:48:51] Speaker B: It sounds like it was one of those. It was actually a destined relationship. Like you just regularly.
[00:48:56] Speaker A: Well, dig this. We had met each other 25 years previously when I was tripping on some jungle drug drawing for botanical people at Harvard. And he was just back from having been in the amazonian jungle doing his adventure. And we met each other, like passing ships in the night. I didn't remember meeting him because I was stoned out of my gourd and he never forgot me. So it was. I don't know if that's destiny or what, but it was like, we're given second chances in life. We're given, you know, as many chances as we need to get it right until we finally wake up and become aware of awareness.
[00:49:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's key. That's really key.
So you're saying that we shouldn't probably step through the rest of your life story here. So I was going to ask you then what questions would you like me to ask you?
You want to talk about love and spirit? Let's go there.
[00:50:00] Speaker A: Well, I just think that the important things in life is how are we going to change this screwed up, messed up world? I mean, so many people are freaked out. I'm not, because I think that everything is happening in the due process, like, especially, you know, what's happening with the states. We're not going to talk about politics, but I don't do politics. I vote. There was a time when I did not vote, and it doesn't make me feel good to do that. I ran away from my responsibilities as a citizen. I didn't pay taxes, but no longer. Now I'm a member of society. I've learned how to accept my role here. So the interesting stuff I like to talk about, and I am talking about it with other podcasters and other change makers, other women especially, it's time for us to help elevate consciousness as much as we can to help end this epoch of real aggression. Because it just doesn't work. I mean, the whole conquest and conquer paradigm is old fashioned. I mean, it just doesn't work. And so what is the solution? We have, since I was a young woman, we have had women being liberated, so to speak. I mean, when I was a kid, there was no such thing as a woman policeman, a woman truck driver, a woman doctor, even. It was unheard of. I was asked by a citizen of Nantucket. Young lady, you come down from that ladder, you're not allowed to paint on the island of Nantucket. I wasn't allowed to do handiwork.
[00:51:44] Speaker B: What?
[00:51:45] Speaker A: So it's true.
[00:51:47] Speaker B: That's bonkers.
[00:51:48] Speaker A: It's bonkers. But this is what's happening. We have evolved so much in just the last 50 years, not just with technology and the Internet, but the consciousness of women finally being liberated from the kitchen and baby making. I'm not a baby maker, but I'm a stepmom. And so I think everybody should be a stepparent, like, go out and find a kid and adopt a kid. We need more step parents. We don't need to have people pumping out so many babies. But I think the important thing to talk about these days is what can we do to change society as fast we can? And it is, like I said earlier, it's about love. It's about acceptance. It's not about challenging each other and being right. It's about listening to the other person's opinion and allowing them to have their space to express themselves, but then to love them, even though you might think, oh, man, they're like, off the wall, but they have the right to their opinion. And contempt is almost like a virus in our society. We have to eradicate contempt.
And along with contempt comes the old fashioned divide and conquer, and mankind just keep having wars and violence.
So I'm very much involved in uplifting consciousness. I call myself a spirit activist. I spread spirit, which is synonymous with love wherever I can, however I can. And sometimes it's just by showing up and talking about who I used to be and who I am now, which is all about, like, really helping to uplift my fellow human beings. Because we're at the crossroads. We really do have to become elevated in our consciousness, or else there's going to be some big price to pay with the environment and with other things that are happening. We don't need to go into all that negativity, but it's a crucial time in our world.
[00:54:01] Speaker B: Absolutely. I totally agree. And I see the changes that are actually already happening, and people are becoming more awake and aware. And as you say, it needs to be an accelerated process. And I like. I like that you're embracing that and helping people. I mean, talking about. I know for myself that talking about my experiences and process I've been through helps others to understand that everything they're doing is a okay when it comes to evolution, because, you know, a lot of us go through experiences and feel like we're all alone in that, but really, everyone else is going through something else like that, too, you know? And when they hear the story, they can go, oh, that's me, too. I've been through there. I've been stuck there. I've been, you know, whatever part of the story is that they're at, and they can, too, evolve into a greater being.
[00:54:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I wrote a whole book about that. It's called hybrid vigor. It's about how we, as animals, because, you know, we are animals, we forget sometimes, but we just. Because we're on the top of the food chain, this.
But we have so much to learn from our brethren, animals. And basically what it is, is about keep evolving and keep loving ourselves and keep being compassionate for each other until all of us decide that we can change right here, right now. We don't have to die and get reborn and try again. We can say right now, I'm going to be a person who puts love at the very heart of everything I do and think and feel and work toward. And therefore, we become, instead of just homo sapiens, thinking we're so knowing, we become homo spiritus, which is truly where we're going. We're going toward becoming more comfortable with us being spiritual beings in this body form for now, this time.
[00:56:00] Speaker B: Yeah, it is a big.
[00:56:01] Speaker A: That's what I'm all about.
[00:56:03] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. It is. This is. This is a very interesting time to be alive, and we all chose to be here, so we might as well enjoy the ride as much as we can. It might get a bit tumultuous, but the other side of it is there is a. There is a thread of love through the whole thing, bringing us towards love and spirit and connection to the divine.
[00:56:21] Speaker A: Yeah. And everything has to happen to get us there. Like, all of the bad stuff had to happen in order for me to make a change, for me to transform my life. And probably you, too, CJ. You had to go through all the pain and the sorrow and the fuck ups and blah, blah, blah, and until finally, wow, you had the courage to do something about it, which is all it really is, is courage. Because every single person has the choice about how life is. Even if they're in prison, they can say to themselves, even though I'm in prison, I can choose to make this experience divine.
[00:57:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. There's always a path to divine, for sure.
So, Tessa, we're coming towards the end of the podcast. I know you're a podcast yourself. Do you want to talk about that?
[00:57:13] Speaker A: Well, Z Lord is the name of our podcast. My husband and I have been podcasters. This is our fifth year.
[00:57:19] Speaker B: Fifth year.
[00:57:20] Speaker A: Wow. Yeah.
We're pros, huh? Most podcasts don't last for more than a year, they say. We started off before the pandemic in 2019.
We were going on a camping trip, a six month camping trip. We didn't know the pandemic was coming, but we really wanted to go and live in the wild and, you know, go car and tent camping, because we like to do that. He's a jungle man, and I'm a. A jungle girl. And so I said to my husband, Carter, let's do something really fun and be podcasters, or wherever we go, we'll just share what's going on. So we started to have a travelogue about our camping, and then the pandemic began. So instead of having the outer journey, we went into the inner journey. And then we did things like, we went to Patagonia two years ago, and we podcasted our way all around Chile and Bolivia and Tierra del Fuego. And now we're basically just talking about what matters the most to us, which is always about spirit in whatever way, shape, or form. We don't have guests. We just use a little old iPhone, and we're not techie people. But, you know, five years is a long time to be putting out an effort.
[00:58:43] Speaker B: Excellent. Excellent. And as you said before, you're an author. Do you want to talk about your books at all?
[00:58:48] Speaker A: Yeah. So my latest book I'm most excited about, it's called the bridge tender. It's a novel, and it's an echo, magical adventure about very much like what we all experience in life. That to get to the good stuff, we have to go through the hard stuff. So we experience the hard stuff, but then we get help from the unseen forces that are all around us. Like, you know, CJ, you're privy to them. Some people want to believe it, but other people, you know, maybe they have not yet decided to let go of their defenses. But the bridge tender is all about how the unseen forces are available to us as a world that struggles, especially with the environment. Right now, we need help to get the environment back to healthy balance. So the bridge tender is a novel, and the other three books, they're my experiences in my journey toward this person that I am today, which is transformed from the person who was previously trying to run away from herself. The first book is called in the Eye, and that's about bringing yoga and meditation to very disturbed girls in prison and how it completely changes not only their life, but their way of thinking and their ability to stay calm when really bad things happen. Like the eye of a hurricane hits them. So you experience not only the inner eye of your own being, but you're experiencing the hurricane as it crashes down onto their isolated facility in central Florida. And then the second book I mentioned earlier about the love story, it's called Zen Love, and it's a really amazing three generation story about how you can transform even the worst situation by just staying focused on love and acceptance and other tools like detachment. Detachment is so important not to get involved with so many dramas just to see the drama, you know, that's being the witness.
Being the witness and seeing all the stuff before you and choosing what it is that's worth your effort to get involved in.
And then the third. Nonfiction is hybrid vigor, about a true reveal of love and how love is consciousness. And by elevating our consciousness, we become more loving and more spiritual, and we evolve right now, during our lifetime, to be homo spiritus instead of homo sapiens, thinking we know everything.
[01:01:38] Speaker B: Beautiful. Excellent. Excellent. Tezza, how can people find more about you, your books, and your podcast straight through your website, tesalord.com.
[01:01:48] Speaker A: Yeah, I have a mothership. I call it my mothership is Teslord Tezalord. And I'm real excited now. I'm developing a course. I know everybody does courses, but I really have this desire to put everything into an encapsulated form that's easily digested. So that's what I'm working on right. Presently. And that'll be available in the next coming like probably early 25.
[01:02:17] Speaker B: Nice. Nice taza. It's been a pleasure talking to you, and I thank you so much for all that you shared and the stories of your life and how you've evolved from really challenging situations into the wonderful, loved being that you are today.
[01:02:34] Speaker A: Well, it's really fun to be here. CJ, I'm really honored that you chose to spend so much time with me. I want to hear your story.
[01:02:43] Speaker B: Maybe we could do that. That'd be cool. I'll talk to you more about that after the show closes here. Now I'll just say goodbye.
[01:02:48] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. Bye. Bye, everybody.
[01:02:57] Speaker B: That was yet another awesome episode. Love hearing Tez's story and how much he went through and how the would you say, it's almost like a curse of addiction really did form her life in certain ways, but that was just the suppression of the true being of who she is, which is love and that expression in the world. So I thank her so much for that deep, deep, deep sharing. And if you've enjoyed today's show, please reach out to Tezra and say thank you as well. That'd be really good. And if you've really enjoyed today's show, please and you're on YouTube, like and subscribe. That'd be really cool. And if you're on your podcast devices, you know, give me five stars and say something really nice because that's really cool too. But if you'd like to actually assist me in some way in making this show happen, I do have a Patreon now, and that's at patreon.com supernormalized, where you can, from as little as $5 per month, assist me in making all this happen. And there's lots of perks that increase in value according to how much you're willing to shell out to help make this happen as well. And yeah, I'm sure you'll enjoy that. I mean, that goes from, you know, joining our special telegram channels just for people who are Patreon subscribers all the way up to having your own show dedicated to you and your story privately. You know, that can be something that can happen too, if you were, if you are interested. Anyway, if you've enjoyed today's show, thank you so much for listening. And until the next episode, it's bye for now.
